The consumerization of Information Technology (IT) includes a trend towards allowing employees control over their computing environment choices. An increasing number of employees may use computing devices, such as laptops and smart phones, to manage both work and personal tasks. The use of such devices may allow these employees to integrate their work lives and personal lives in order to maintain a continual work-life reality. These computing devices often contain sensitive personal and work-related data.
Sensitive data may include financial data, such as credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and various other types of financial data. Sensitive data may also include personal information such as social security numbers, passwords, birthdays, and various other types of personal information. Computing devices may also contain other types of sensitive data, such as confidential intellectual property. Unauthorized access to confidential data may result in financial loss and other undesirable consequences.
Traditional enterprise IT infrastructures may protect sensitive data by strictly controlling the devices used to access the sensitive data. For example, in a traditional network infrastructure, only desktop computers that are directly connected to an office's local area network may be allowed to access confidential data. However, this traditional approach to protecting sensitive data may no longer be feasible due to the consumerization of IT, as described above. What is needed, therefore, is a more robust mechanism for protecting sensitive data.